Fired up, again

The last time I fired up an outdoor grill was 15 years ago. After moving into this neighborhood, everyone seems to grill things out-of-doors. Naturally, my wife wanted a new outdoor grill, in order for us to show off as prominently as they. Unfortunately, little did she know about my historic pension for burning stuff over an open fire.

For example, I attempted roasting a whole hog on a grill in Illinois. The wind was blustery that day . Unfortunately,  I caught our whole wooden deck afire: two fires simultaneously! At another lake house, I tried the whole hog scenario again. On this occasion, I got a huge mobile 2-ton smoker. I fired the thing up about 5 A.M., stoking with hickory logs. The hog came out burnt black, and the fire department drove by once to check rising smoke from our driveway.

And there is little doubt in my mind that in a one of my past lives I was an Oracle priest! It had to be some place like the Temple of Delphi or an Oracle for Athena. Maybe an Inca temple where big fires were used, because I do burn offerings very well.

Our  new Webber Grill is dandy. It has spring holder for the propane tank. The holder has teeny graduated red tanks to measure the amount of unused propane. That is so amazingly hi-tech, being able to X-ray inside a steel canister and seeing fluid. The cooking knobs are coded black and white as per heat. Now, who reads instruction, and I thought it was black on white, meaning the black showed how much flame was shooting up to burn foods. As I fired up for the first time, the temperature gage kept reading hotter and hotter. So, I was twisting more black space per knob, believing it was reducing the propane burning. When the grill hit 425 degrees, the meat was screeching through the lid, then the fact hit me: it is a WHITE on BLACK coding.

About that time, the little woman came form of the house. Her heartbeat raced when she saw all of the smoke swirling skyward, heard the sizzling meat, and noticed the grill was standing very close to her house. Purposely, I warned her NOT to lift its lid lest she singe her eyebrows and hair. Calmly, we worked through the knob-turning issue. We took the  well "cooked" hunk of meat inside.

But, during last night’s sleep, I had nightmares about grilling. I dreamed that I was roasting people on that grill. By tuning the knobs, its temperature kept going higher and higher. Luckily, these were folks unknown to me, but they got a real turn inside my grill